Grammar

[JanusGoneAwry]

I recently had a poorly educated character that I intended to speak in a creole-esq dialect. Once finished I read all of the dialog out loud and felt that it sounded racist so I left the attempts at dialect out and settled for occasional labels calling out his dialectic tendencies.

Has anyone else had a situation like that crop up?

 

[KeithD]

I don't do dialects well, so I stick with the bare "hint" application.

 

[SamScribble]

I recently had a poorly educated character that I intended to speak in a creole-esq dialect. Once finished I read all of the dialog out loud and felt that it sounded racist so I left the attempts at dialect out and settled for occasional labels calling out his dialectic tendencies.

Has anyone else had a situation like that crop up?

In this day and age, anything that anyone writes (about anything) sounds racist to someone.

 

[TadOverdon]

First of all, before launching into an essay the important thing to say is just this: You read it back and you don't like the sound of it. That's what matters, period.

Okay, then...IMHO, any rendering of dialect phonetically is dicey and that's what lots of writers do: spelling words the way they think they hear the dialect speaker pronouncing them.

For one thing, it's so, so easy to get it wrong or at least render it in such a way that someone else familiar with the dialect may take issue with choices. It can be a little like trying to create a foreign language phrase by using Google Translate. Someone who speaks the dialect is certainly unlikely to hear it in the way that an outsider would.

It's better (again, IMHO) to just recreate the cadence of vocabulary and word order and word choice: characterize people by what they say rather than the noises they make. If someone is in fact speaking something like a creole dialect, there are going to be a lot of clues in grammar and vocabulary. Just as there will probably be if the person is uneducated.

And/or, note "She spoke in a creole dialect."

After all, you'll only very rarely see a writer render British English phonetically as a dialect. Instead, they'll either note in text that the speaker has such an accent or they use word choice and vocabulary to establish it. And yes, the reason that you won't see it often with a British person and will see it done badly all too often with characters of some other backgrounds has a good deal to do with cultural myopia and bias. It's not necessary to jump and hit a big red hot button by labeling it "racist," but it does show an unavoidable bias of observation.

Also, it's harder for many readers to decipher phonetically-rendered dialogue.

 

[Handley_Page]

I recently had a poorly educated character that I intended to speak in a creole-esq dialect. Once finished I read all of the dialog out loud and felt that it sounded racist so I left the attempts at dialect out and settled for occasional labels calling out his dialectic tendencies.

Has anyone else had a situation like that crop up?

You might try and put a Note in the text, and perhaps, a note for Lauren

 

[Kumquatqueen]

It's better ... to just recreate the cadence of vocabulary and word order and word choice: characterize people by what they say rather than the noises they make. If someone is in fact speaking something like a creole dialect, there are going to be a lot of clues in grammar and vocabulary. Just as there will probably be if the person is uneducated.

And/or, note "She spoke in a creole dialect."

After all, you'll only very rarely see a writer render British English phonetically as a dialect. Instead, they'll either note in text that the speaker has such an accent or they use word choice and vocabulary to establish it. And yes, the reason that you won't see it often with a British person and will see it done badly all too often with characters of some other backgrounds has a good deal to do with cultural myopia and bias. It's not necessary to jump and hit a big red hot button by labeling it "racist," but it does show an unavoidable bias of observation.

Also, it's harder for many readers to decipher phonetically-rendered dialogue.

I completely agree - go for word choice and order, and as little phonetic spelling as possible. And then go through and get rid of half of the phonetic spelling, apostrophes and words that your majority readers won't understand.

I do disagree that you don't see British English written as a dialect - apart from lumping all British Englishes together, it's often done badly - there's a world of bad Harry Potter fic, James Bond fic and Spike/Giles from Buffy fic, not to mention published stuff - Dan Brown, Patricia Cornwell...

I've tried writing Americans (my last story apparently I did OK except no American would use the phrase 'gets on my tits'), but I put a lot more effort into the dialect when writing characters from across the divide in Northern Ireland, both for accuracy and for comprehensibility (though one guy uses his dialect on purpose to confuse people and wind them up!)

I eventually got rid of pretty much all the apostrophes and non-standard spellings (except for 'fillum'), and removed half the instances of the word 'wee', even if it would be more authentic with.

 

[TadOverdon]

My younger characters are more likely to drop "gs," hopefully not too often, but that's probably my worst offense in that department. Many characters say "gonna" from time to time, mostly to indicate a particular kind of casualness of manner.

Younger characters are also more likely to overuse "like." That, I know, is stereotyping them to some extent.

Tics like that sometimes help to distinguish between characters conversing with one another when I'm trying to reduce frequency of dialogue tags.

Someone may point out that some truly brilliant writers have rendered dialect well. Faulkner will come up, as will Shaw. I sure won't argue that point. But being neither of those extraordinary talents and considering that the questioner was expressing dissatisfaction with their own attempts at it, I think the best advice is still: just don't.

 

[gordo12]

Grammarly is a nice free support tool. It has its limits. It's helped me a good deal with comma faults. Sometimes I don't follow its guidance but at least I'm making a conscious stylistic decision that I know I'll have to live with.

I am regrettably accustomed to seeing comments on decent stories rip the author for poor grammar and/or spelling. And I get that. I understand that some folks have triggers that bring out the demon-beast in them, but I don't understand someone with a love of reading downgrading an otherwise good story to a two-star, because of grammar. It just makes no sense to me.

Anyway, in another life, I wrote for a living, and, though I haven't posted on this site, I continue to compose something every day. I have personally found that the free app Grammarly, especially when used as an Add-In to MS Word, is an invaluable tool. It tracks errors of both spelling and grammar in a separate pane alongside the document, and allows you to make changes, or if it was an intentional variation from proper grammar, you may choose to mute the suggestion.

Just a suggestion, but I'd love to see everyone who writes for Literotica try it out. (Ha, the app just flagged "Literotica" as a usage error)

There is one other Grammarly feature that might be of interest to people here. You can load up your (published) stories or sections of them and do a plagiarism check. It'll list what and where for you. With so much theft showing up on Amazon, that alone is worthwhile. I'm sure I used it on the free version before buying the premium.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't do dialects well, so I stick with the bare "hint" application.

Me, too.

I think with dialects the two "rules" are:

1. Make sure you really know the dialect and how to render it, and

2. Go easy. A little bit goes a long way.

I wouldn't know how to render a Yorkshire accent or an Australian accent. I recognize them when I hear them, but I don't know their details, and I don't know enough about the words they use that are different from American English. I notice that most of the Australian authors on this site aren't peppering their stories full of "G'Day" and "shrimps on the barbie," so I figure there's no need for me to do it.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

I use accents quite a lot as they think they add character. Mainly regional English and Scots as they are what I am most familiar with.

I have also tried my hand at the odd US and Aussie and not had any criticism for any of them.

I try not to go overboard, but to me, when reading, it brings characters alive.

That said, I am currently writing an Indian lady character and despite having worked with many wonderful Indians over the years, I don't feel happy trying to mimic them, so I refer to her 'clipped Indian accent' and use a slightly stilted form of English for her speech.

 

[TadOverdon]

Varying vocabulary and structure as appropriate for different characters - formal, educated, clipped, slangy, casual, etc. - goes a long way.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I wouldn't know how to render a Yorkshire accent or an Australian accent. I recognize them when I hear them, but I don't know their details, and I don't know enough about the words they use that are different from American English. I notice that most of the Australian authors on this site aren't peppering their stories full of "G'Day" and "shrimps on the barbie," so I figure there's no need for me to do it.

Good choice. "Shrimp on the barbie" is fake Aussie translated for American audiences; here it would be a "prawn".

Most of the other stereotypically "Aussie" dialect is kind of like a hillbilly dialect in a US setting - yes there are people who speak that way, but using it plausibly requires some familiarity with the culture. Me doing it would be like a Harvard Business School grad pretending to be a cowboy.

 

[SimonDoom]

Good choice. "Shrimp on the barbie" is fake Aussie translated for American audiences; here it would be a "prawn".

Most of the other stereotypically "Aussie" dialect is kind of like a hillbilly dialect in a US setting - yes there are people who speak that way, but using it plausibly requires some familiarity with the culture. Me doing it would be like a Harvard Business School grad pretending to be a cowboy.

I'm glad I guessed right on that one.

 

[ErisTeori]

...a Harvard Business School grad pretending to be a cowboy.

Nothing about dialect writing from me, only a comment that I happen to know a Harvard Business School grad who actually is a cowboy. He's initially underestimated lots because of his accent, but only initially. He's turned it all into a great corporate persona. I've often imagined him as a sexy main character. One more idea I will probably never flesh out completely.

Thanks for the spot to ramble. =)

 

[wifeisslutty]

I just think sometimes, internet smut stories suffer when being overly grammatical.

I write first person loving wife stories, supposedly written by the husband in Texas, I have also written them from NY, Boston, CA.

They are not novels, they are supposed to be this husband telling you his story. I use proper punctuation and such, to a point, since, Grammerly, Microsoft, and Literotica, and my former college English teacher do not always agree on proper punctuation.

I have spent 15 minutes letting them change each other back and forth, and many times they try to insert words or adverbs that don't even make sense.

The point is, if I am writing a first person story from a regular Joe from TX, I am going to write it the way an amateur Joe from TX would write it, without being ridiculous, like a backwoods hick, but using the rhythms and words they normally use to speak.

It is completely unbelievable when you have a first person story from a particular place and that 1st person account has no recognizable speech patterns from that place.

I have traveled all over the world for the past 40 years, and when I read a story and they are supposedly a husband from CA and using words, or more importantly not using words that a husband form CA would use, it instantly becomes in my mind fake amateur porn.

My first literotica story was hammered for grammar, though I used proper Texas grammar relative to the region the husband was telling the story from. I ended up writing a correction just to shut them the fuck up, but it annoyed me as now the story isn't really true to the character supposedly writing the story.

 

[KeithD]

There's a difference between word usage and punctuation. Yes, fiction can play loose with word usage. The narration grammar is controlled by the education level of the narrator and the narrator often is a character in the story. This is different from punctuation, though. That should continue to follow a standard. The context should still be punctuated for clarity. Punctuation for clarity actually becomes even more important as the grammar of the syntax strays away from formal English.

 

[ErisTeori]

I recently had a poorly educated character that I intended to speak in a creole-esq dialect. Once finished I read all of the dialog out loud and felt that it sounded racist so I left the attempts at dialect out and settled for occasional labels calling out his dialectic tendencies.

Has anyone else had a situation like that crop up?

Yes, albeit a while back, and not something I would label racist. Anyway, in one of my writing classes in college, we read Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Our assignment was to write in the vernacular Hurston used with her characters. Not easy. Didn't feel right. Which was exactly the point of the exercise. Sometimes, you just don't.

 

[TadOverdon]

During proofing on our last book someone was complaining about spelling consistency:

Such as the lack of standardized spelling for Dumb Porn Words like synonyms for anatomy.

Fuckrod, fuck-rod, or fuck rod?

Cock-crown or cock crown? Is this ever a good noun, anyway? Sad but true: "the head of his dick" is tres awkward after a few repetitions.

Fuckmeat, fuck-meat...well, you get the idea.

I guess you can do the Google spelling poll, but the spelling that looks right one place looks wrong the next day for Reasons (Tad copped to obsessive behavior, right?) . Still, got to give Grammarly a definitive answer so she'll stop being a nudge.

 

[KeithD]

During proofing on our last book someone was complaining about spelling consistency:

Well, yes. There's no reason to be inconsistent in spelling/word hyphenation across your story. Characters rarely spell out what they are saying. When they do and the point that they spell it differently from the narration, that's OK too. It just doesn't often come into play.

 

[TadOverdon]

Well, yes. There's no reason to be inconsistent in spelling/word hyphenation across your story. Characters rarely spell out what they are saying. When they do and the point that they spell it differently from the narration, that's OK too. It just doesn't often come into play.

Yeah, I think the complaint was about a lack of authoritative reference.

I think we decided on hyphens for most of them. Except "cock crown." But I don't always like the look of that.

 

[KeithD]

Yeah, I think the complaint was about a lack of authoritative reference.

I think we decided on hyphens for most of them. Except "cock crown." But I don't always like the look of that.

For American style, at least, there is an authoritative source on spelling and hyphenation. The Chicago Manual of Style is the almost universally accepted authority on publishing by American publishers, and it specifies two authoritative spelling and hyphenation sources in 2.51: Webster's International Dictionary and Miriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionary (the later in main use because the former requires a truck to maneuver with). These dictionaries are the only real help with hyphenation (computer programs are hopeless with this) in the American style. At the point of the listing of most prefixes and suffixes (e.g., pre, re, over), the dictionaries provide specific guidance on specific words.

The dictionary provides authoritative help for American usage in many ways, if you learn how to use it. See "Dictionary Smarts Can Up Ratings" (https://www.literotica.com/s/dictionary-smarts-can-up-ratings)